A mode of cellular communication is normally used in an existing wireless communication system. That is, multiple base stations are deployed by an operator to cover a region where communication is to be performed, and each of the base stations has a separate coverage range and is responsible for functions such as user scheduling, data transmission, demodulation and so on within the coverage range thereof. The 2G (GSM) communication system, the 3G (WCDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and so on) communication system and the 4G (LTE, LTE-A) communication system have a same basic principle of cellular coverage although they are different in specific functions. In the case that a user terminal moves from a cell to another cell, it is required for the user terminal to switch between the cells to guarantee continuity of communication, since each cell has a relatively independent scheduling system and demodulation and decoding system. Channel quality is required to be measured in a process of the switch, to ensure that the switch is performed correctly.
Specifically, the user terminal measures with respect to a home cell and an adjacent cell based on configuration on a network side, processes a measurement result, and then reports the measurement result to the network side. The network side determines whether to perform cell switch based on the reported measurement result, and transmits a switch instruction in the case that the cell switch is required. The user terminal performs a switch flow upon receiving the switch instruction, and is connected to a target cell. Ping-pong effect is further to be avoided while guaranteeing switch performance. The ping-pong effect is that a user terminal is switched back and forth between two cells endlessly due to an unreasonable cell switch method or parameter, thereby seriously affecting transmission performance of the user terminal and wasting network resources.
A conventional method is thus to convey measurement results in a physical layer of the user terminal to a high layer such as a Radio Resource Control (RRC) layer. The high layer filters and iterates the measurement results, and transmits a relative long-term and average measurement result to the network side to determine. FIG. 1 shows a measurement model for the conventional method in TS36.300. In FIG. 1, A is measurement values in a physical layer, the measurement values are filtered and subjected to report criterion evaluation in layer 3 after being filtered in layer 1, and then the measurement values are reported. The measurement values are averaged to some extent upon being filtered in layer 1, and the report criterion evaluation is used for checking whether it is necessary to report the measurement values. The evaluation may be also based on multiple flows at C such as C and C′ for the measurement values, for example, to compare different measurement values. In addition, the report criterion evaluation can also be used for comparing the measurement result of the user terminal with a reference value to obtain a comparison result, and performing statistics on the comparison result within a time period, and for example, the measurement result is reported only in the case that the comparison result meets a condition within the time period.
The method described above can avoid the ping-pong effect. However, the method has disadvantages such as long time delay, high complexity and extra signaling overheads since processing in the high layer is required. For example, the switch flow often takes about 2 s in the 2G system, and even in the 4G system such as LTE or LTE-A in which the system is simplified greatly, the switch flow also takes at least 100 ms. Therefore, the communication requirement in a network structure which becomes even more diverse can not be met.